


addenda

by betony



Category: 15th Century CE RPF, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, Greek and Roman Mythology, The Dalemark Quartet - Diana Wynne Jones, The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-02-03 05:41:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1733162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshots from the (winter) 3 Sentence Ficathon, along with various other short works</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. love the way you--

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: _Norse mythology, Bragi/Idunn, tell me a story_

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Norse mythology, Bragi/Idunn, tell me a story_

"Tell me a story," she whispers and he clears his throat; it is an old request, long since become habit between the two of them. 

"Your brother died well in battle," he says, and the words fall baldly from his poet's tongue, his usual eloquence gone, "attacked by a stranger, and I came across him too late to do anything but ease his passing, and then I met you, my love." 

"Yes," says Idunn sadly, undeceived as ever; her fingers ghost across his lying lips.


	2. do not speak as loud as my heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _star trek | spock/uhura | i had to find you, tell you i need you, tell you i set you apart_

After the ringing in his ears ceases--after the dust clears--Spock takes stock of his surroundings with growing dread; he and his TA had been escorting their students back from a lecture held at the Andorian Embassy and had stumbled onto the bomb blast just outside; and he notes Cadets Johnson, Gupta, and Chen all have minor scrapes, while Cadet Thompson appears to have a mild concussion; but he can't concentrate, can't think to determine which cadet requires his attention first, or calculate where his efforts might produce maximum benefit, not while his heart continues to beat erratically, not while-- 

"Spock," calls Nyota from behind him, supporting another cadet on her shoulder, "We're all right." 

He composes himself.


	3. brave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Greek Mythology, Aeneas/Cassandra, you're the bravest girl/in the whole wide world_

"I don't know what you mean," she says, lowering her head demurely, "I haven't been in any battles, you know." 

Aeneas looks at her, a little helplessly, and she takes pity on him. 

"Oh, my friend; you were meant to say: _but words piece so much more deeply than a spear, but you shrug them off as though you were god-born Hercules_ "; and she imitates Deiphobus's pompous tones so well that she's quite sure Aeneas pays no mind to the bitterness of her smile.


	4. burning bright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Greek mythology, Andromache/Helen, one night (with no regrets)_

To heartsick Andromache, it seems they've only just extinguished Paris's funeral pyres (so soon after Hektor's) when Priam decrees a grand celebration for Helen and Deiphobus's marriage, the better to raise morale for a city realizing it's on the verge of disaster. Andromache's contribution is limited to holding Astaynx close and disinterestedly supervising what servants they can spare from the battlefield; she is ashamed of not doing more, but too weary to feel anything but regret. 

But the night before the wedding, Helen comes to her, takes her hand, says simply: "for comfort"; and this much, at least, Andromache can allow them both.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Historical RPF, Richard III/Anne Neville, I've been waiting all my life/I've been waiting for you to come_  
>  Part of the modern! War of the Roses AU.

At five, Anne's idea of the perfect man is Edmund York, who always has a wink and a smile for a little girl hiding under a table at campaign HQ; at eight, she has a soft spot for gentle Frank Lovell, who understands what she means when she stammers out her love of old books and hot chocolate; and most embarrassing of all, for a couple of years in her teens, she's as susceptible to Edward York's golden splendor as any other girl. 

Throughout it all, Richard is there only on the periphery; Richard, who doesn't smile often but whose entire face lights up when he does, Richard who listens to her with affectionate incomprehension when she delights over beautiful prose or poetry, Richard who's dark and dour and nothing like the rest of his handsome family. 

Still. When he kisses her, eventually, all she can think is: _at last_.


	6. those gone ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Greek mythology, Achilles/Iphigenia, she's the only one who knows/what it is to burn_

"You always fall in love with the ones you kill," she says, amused, and he flinches, the Amazon's beautiful, broken face shining in his memory; "if you're not careful, I might be jealous." 

"Did it hurt much?" he asks instead, and he means his spear piercing Penthisilea's heart, the feats of glory on the battlefield that led Patroclus to expect a last miracle that never came, the slash of his knife across a long pale neck; his victims are many, and his heart given away too many times to count, but Iphigenia's the only one who ever lingered to answer. 

"You'll find out soon enough," she promises, exactly what he half-dreads, half-longs to hear, and as her small fingertips rake, arrow-sharp, across his chest, his arms, his heels, he wonders what she must have done in life, to give her such sympathy for the condemned.


	7. staring into eternity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the quote: _Fullmetal Alchemist, Ling, would you still say you want everything?_

" _Everything_ comes with a price, after all," croaks the Eternal Emperor of Xing, " with food, indigestion; with wealth, the need to calculate taxes; with age, unsightly grey hairs; with love--" 

Colonel Mustang of Amestris, eighteenth member of her family to bear that rank and surname, after her famous ancestor, stifles a yawn and wishes he would finish his afternoon walk and sign the new tariff settlement already; the gardens of Xing are beautiful, yes, but there's nothing much of interest in this particular one, just a pair of drab but carefully tended tombs for the Emperor's first two bodyguards. 

"Loss," Ling finishes sadly.


	8. shaped from your own two hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Greek mythology, Clytemnestra, so darkness I became_

Agamemnon fears her, that much is clear. 

When she marries him, Clytemnestra genuinely means to be a good wife, to keep his home and family protected and prosperous, to add her glory to Mycenae's own; but he turns from her a thousand times, resentful of her father's patronage, suspicious of her fidelity and her strength and her god-touched lineage, and her heart grows dark and bruised. 

And then one day he extends the same mistrust to her daughter, and then all is clear; if destruction is all he sees in her person, then so shall it be.


	9. written by the victors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Also for the prompt: _Greek mythology, Clytemnestra, so darkness I became_

They will find a way, she knows, to convince him his matricide was justified: she was his father's murderer, after all, and wasn't he banished cruelly from Mycenae as a child, only at her command? They will forget about the nights she spent at his cradle when she sang him to sleep and kissed his cheeks, the mornings when gentle Iphigenia clapped her hands with glee at her brother's every coo and gurgle, that terrible day when the same father he avenged made plans to sacrifice his son (not even half-grown!) to a Trojan battlefield as easily as he once did his daughter, before she spirited her son out of his grasping hands; in the end, she knows, they will turn her into a monster, the better to pull Orestes from the wreckage of infamy. 

(And, she, Clytemnestra, will be lost to oblivion.)


	10. don't it make you want to cry?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Daphne, her thoughts on laurel wreaths_

At first she is furious. 

It seems to her yet another affront: that her leaves be taken from her to crown his latest favorite, in a gesture that is half prize, half gesture. _Just look at your strength!_ such a gift might say. _But look at this, too, the fate of those who refuse me._ And the lad (dark-haired and dark-eyed, she imagines, just the sort Phoebus likes best) would turn pale, eyes wide and fixed on his god and never again dream of defiance. 

Sap flares up in her breast that year, and for the first and only time, her leaves turn scarlet with the seasons. 

But time goes on, and one day, a stray wind (sent by Zephyrus, perhaps, who must atone for his sins against Apollo--Daphne, who remembers comforting her grieving friend, desolate after that damnable discus competition, knows that better than almost anyone) brings her the voice of 

Apollo, speaking to one of his victors in a nearby glade. 

"I've done it!" says the runner, puffing out his chest despite his shallow breaths. "I've beaten them all!" 

A half-smile darts against Apollo's lips. "So you have," he agrees pleasantly. 

Daphne's limbs shake with irritation. 

"But," he says, just as easily, "I knew someone, once, who would have raced across the course in half your time. She would have strung her bow without fumbling once, and she would have brought down that deer that raced across your path in the woods with a single arrow and still come first ." 

Daphne stills. 

"You will never match her," says the god. His face gives nothing away, but she can make out the faintest hint of old grief in the curl of his mouth. "No one will, not now." He holds out the laurel wreath anyway. 

"Wear this," Apollo says, "in memory of her prowess." 

It means something, Daphne thinks, that he chooses to speak of her talent instead of her beauty or--worse still--his love for her. It might mean that he remembers, as she does, that once they had first know each other, she shy and gangly and despairing of ever winning his sister's approval, him always ready with support and a smile and a trick about how to best hold her bow, until he had had betrayed her, turning every prior kindness into nothing more than a way to win her, and when that had failed, had sought to use brute force instead. 

This is the first indication she has ever had that her old friend might not have been entirely lost to Eros's dart; it is certainly something in the way of an apology, and she might even accept it--with time. These days, she has nothing but time. 

Daphne is content.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For prompt 50, "chakras" at the avatar-500 LJ contest. There's more to being the Avatar than just following the rules.

**.earth.** _(survival/fear)_

Kyoshi has learned her lessons well from a childhood under the rule of the weakling Earth King, so as the Avatar, her heart leaps to imagine a world where none must live in fear as she has; in Korra’s day, five hundred years later, they still speak in hushed voices of Kyoshi the Conqueror. 

**.water.** _(pleasure/guilt)_

Tarlokk says, “You are our Avatar, our protector; you deserve all our gifts and more,” and Korra, seeing that he is right, takes his hand and smiles. 

**.fire.** _(willpower/shame)_

In the Fire Nation, nothing is so sacred as the bond between friends; Roku lances lightning into Sozin’s dangling body and turns his back on a thousand years of culture. 

**.air.** _(love/grief)_

Aang does not weep for Gyatso, or Appa, or ZukoTophSokka _Katara_ ; when negotiating a surrender with the Phoenix King in exchange for the Earth Kingdom’s survival and asked to explain his sacrifice of his friends, he only replies that he chose a higher love. 

**.sound.** _(truth/lies)_

Yangchen confesses to the Fire Sages, “The last Sun Warriors you hunt hide on an island to the north,” and with that, a civilization is entirely overcome. 

**.light.** _(insight/illusion)_

“You’re not her,” Kuruk snarls at Ummi’s face as he hurls his spear (so light, for such a bloodthirsty thing) forward into Koh’s chest; the world tumbles out of balance and he doesn't care. 

**.thought.** _(pure cosmic energy/earthly attachments)_

The lion turtle speaks of a world controlled by elements rather than energy, of being bound to this world when no other soul remains, of being deaf to the music of the stars; the first Avatar thinks this over and simply replies, “No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parentheticals after each section title include the subject of each chakra, as well as the emotion that blocks said chakra. All information regarding chakras and timelines come from Avatar Wiki, with the exception of Yangchen’s plotline; since we don’t know too much about her, and since the remaining Sun Warriors' reaction to visitors suggest they might have been hunted in the past, I smushed the two together and decided that Yangchen protected them from the Fire Sages’ invasion of their lands. In addition, this was also written prior to Legend of Korra's reveal about the first Avatar.


	12. spies like...us?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Super-silly (and super-old) fill for the Rom-Com Ficathon on hariboo's LJ for the prompt: _fma (mangahood) Roy/Riza, university au, meet-cute in the library stacks_

This catastrophe, like so many others, he blames on Fullmetal. 

If the boy (and what sort of nickname was Fullmetal, anyway, when the kid has a perfectly reasonable name like Edward Elric? Resolutely Roy ignores the nagging voice in his head that points out that not only does he sound like he’s fifty but also more than a few people from his own student days remember him as Flame, after a particularly uh, _exciting_ day in chemistry lab) hadn’t kept him after class with a confusing mixture of insults and genuinely interested questions about applied theory, Roy obviously would have remembered to stop by his flat at lunch and pick up his personal copy of _Applied Thermochemistry_ to photocopy for his one o’clock seminar. 

Instead, now he is stuck checking out a copy from the university library with fifteen minutes to spare, praying there wouldn’t be a damn line at the damn copier once he finds the damn book. 

_541.361, 541.362, where is it, 541.363_ ….In his preoccupation, Roy manages somehow to throw himself solidly in the way of someone moving in the opposite direction; that someone, once he’s gotten a better look, turns out to be the last person he’d expect: his old thesis advisor’s sharp-eyed (and –tongued, for that matter) daughter. 

“What’re you doing here?” Roy asks before he can think better of it, _here_ referring both to the stacks and Central University itself. Last he heard, Riza joined the military, leaving behind one very disappointed student of her father’s, and has done quite well for herself, all things considered. Even Berthold Hawkeye, curmudgeon that he was, had been proud of her in the end. 

“I’m teaching these days,” she tells him. “Applied trigonometry.” 

Roy blinks. “Is that code for ‘the military’s sending its best sniper on a secret mission on an _university campus_ '?” 

“That’s code for ‘I know fifteen ways to kill you in your sleep if you blow my cover.’” 

Roy freezes, at least until Riza starts laughing. 

“Still the same Roy. You’ll believe anything.” 

"I knew what you meant,” he says, because he does. He always knows when Riza is joking. “I did!” 

Riza only smiles. “I resigned my commission three months ago. Some parts of being the Eye of the Hawk I never really cared for, and others—don’t hold as much appeal as they used to. That being said,” her expression sours, “they never warn you how going over the Pythagorean Theorum for the forty-sixth time to a bunch of bored freshmen is worse than basic training. Much, much worse.” 

Roy bites back a grin; no use in rubbing it in. Instead, he tries to lean against the nearest bookshelf in the most casually elegant manner he can manage, never mind that the last time he demonstrated this particular pose to Vanessa, his sister nearly fell over giggling. “Let me buy you a coffee,” he says, sending a dazzling grin in her direction, “maybe that’ll make it up to you a bit.” 

Riza bends her head to consider his proposal and then shrugs. “Why not? My last class ends at four. I’ll see you at the student union café?” 

“Sure,” Roy says, still maintaining his debonair stance, and it’s not until she disappears around the corner that he quickly reminds himself of several important things: 

First, that he’s only got five minutes left ‘til one, and no book. Fullmetal is never going to let him hear the end of this. 

Second, that while Riza had been a brilliant student—and how could she not have been?—it probably wasn’t enough to guarantee her a graduate degree in mathematics, not to mention a teaching appointment, in just three months. 

Third, that the rumors floating around campus, that of more and more students starting to disappear without a trace, have only intensified over the past few months—exactly the sort of thing someone might want to send a retired sniper with a reputation for calm competence to investigate. 

(He does always know when Riza is just joking, after all.) 

He’s starting to suspect his life just got a great deal more complicated—but, if it means Riza’s back, he can’t complain.


	13. the future is calling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _The Dalemark Quartet, Mitt Alhamittsson/Maewen Singer, phone calls_

For someone who’s survived and seamlessly fit into two centuries of Dalemark’s history, Mitt can be surprisingly pigheaded about progress. “Flaming Ammet,” he grumbles, eyeing the new mobile she’s bought him with the same unloving glare he must have given the first rotary ever invented, “what possible advantage could this possibly have over sitting down and having a proper talk with someone?” 

“Naughty pictures?” offers Maewen, and chokes to see the expression on his face.


	14. your last drop of air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Greek Mythology, Aeneas/Cassandra, all this breathing/and the truth, it's in your last breath_

_You.)_ Close your eyes because there's nothing else to be seen with them, only the downward swing of the axe, and instead there's the fill of your lungs, in out, in out, as steady and constant as the waves that beat across the wine-dark sea on their way to Latium, away from poor doomed Dido, away from poor doomed Troy. You think, even bright merciless Apollo could not deny you one moment of truth escaping your lips to be heard across the distance, to be believed against all possibility, so you suck in one great gulp of air, and when that moment is your last, they say it lasts forever: _(I love_


	15. wife to a better man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _The Iliad - Homer, Hector/Helen of Troy, she marries him instead_

No one is more surprised than Helen when Hektor of Troy claims her hand, and she (thanks to Odysseus’s scheming) the one to choose her mate at that; it’s only that the tales he spins of Troy--of his sisters, free to range across Troy’s walls unencumbered; of his cousin, godborn but treated the same as his siblings–strike so deep in her soul that she surrenders even her birthright to Sparta to follow him across the sea. It is no passionate marriage, but a honorable, respectful one, and long it might have lasted if Hektor had not been sent as emissary to Thebe by his father, if a long-lost son of Priam hadn’t hungered for revenge against those who had forsaken him by taking what they treasured most— 

\--Somewhere Aphrodite laughs.


	16. a fragile little flame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Greek Mythology, Ariadne/Dionysus, they are the hunters/we are the foxes/and we run_

Ariadne, poor Ariadne, you believe Theseus with his lying tongue and roaming eyes ( _sweet tongue_ and _sea-deep eyes_ you call them, not knowing that's the same thing in the end) is the worst that the Fates could weave into your path? Beautiful princess, still standing so defiant on Naxos's beach, I could tell you of Pestilence and and Jealousy and Spite, of Gluttony and and Guilt and Gullibility (that's what killed my mother, you know), all freed into the world by my father's machinations; all those nip at our heels as we race through our days on this earth, and some feel their presence at their back no matter what they do, and some like my maenads dance out of their way, and some like you go about their lives so high-handed, so high-spirited as though nothing not of their choosing could ever catch them. 

Except, Ariadne, strong-hearted Ariadne, I wish it were so.


	17. home before you know it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Historical RPF, Richard III/Anne Neville, hold on, I'm coming/lock your doors and wait for me_

She thinks sometimes that there has always been a war around her, whatever they might say of Edward's golden reign; that she has always had a need to defend herself, because certainly no one else will. Her father buffets her mind from side to side, badgering it with questions about how the wind is blowing today, and what that means for their loyalties; her husband would claim her body in more ways than one, forcing her to stand by his side as beautiful, biddable Lancaster Queen; and George lays siege to her very soul, tempting her with just how easy it would be to surrender and subside, as her mother has done before her. 

And then there is Richard, a small measure of peace in blood-stained gauntlets; she hears the clink of his dark armor, rises half-disbelievingly to her feet, and goes to let him in.


	18. from the shadows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _The Odyssey, Ctimene, the untold life of Odysseus' sister_

Odysseus is an observant man; he notices, after the wedding, how Ctimene's shoulders stoop, how her smiles grow infrequent,and it is easy enough to convince his father to let Eurylochus accompany him to Troy. Ctimene throws her arms around him when he leaves, nods when he whispers: _Take care of Penelope,_ and after her brother's ship disappears into the horizon, practices a heartbroken expression to adopt when Odysseus tells them on his return of his brother-in-law's tragic death. 

The real trick, she reflects, satisfied, is not so much to observe as to have something worth observing.


	19. make a man out of you--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Queen's Thief series, Costis, the king is a very bad influence_

"Lieutenant Ormentiedes, in the last six weeks alone, I've had complaints of your involvement in blasphemy ("Could have happened to anyone," the King added in a stage whisper), petty theft ("There was nothing _petty_ about it," muttered the King), and drunk and disorderly conduct ("That," said the King with evident relish, "I had nothing to do with.") To Costis's eternal surprise, Attolia turned to her consort then and addressed her next words to him instead: "Just what do you intend to do about it?" 

"I think," drawled Eugenides, "that I'll make a general out of him before I'm done."


	20. what might have been

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Classical mythology, Psyche/Eros, he learns that hard way that love doesn't conquer all and trust is a difficult fragile thing to hold onto_

He sees her at times, following in Persephone's wake, handpicked out of the souls wandering the Asphodel Fields to serve the Queen of the Dead; sometimes she laughs at a jest of Persephone's, or holds the flowers that her mistress has picked, or more often, simply smiles to feel the sun on her back again--she always did appreciate the simple pleasures in life. Perhaps that had been his mistake: if he had given her a garden instead of a palace, if he had been a friend as well as a lover instead of a husband only by night, if when old age had ravaged her beauty, he had admitted to her that he prized her for more than those fleeting charms (if—if--if). 

She never looks back at him (she never did).


	21. aught mute yet deeply shaken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Howl's Moving Castle, Sophie/Howl, she finds his love letters are absolutely atrocious._

_To Sophia,_ it begins (and that is the first ridiculous thing; Howl of all people should be well aware that she's just plain Sophie), _Thou art fair, and few are fairer_ (that, though is just like Howl, crowing about how she of all people had been able to break the Witch's curse). A bit further down, it continues: _Thy deep eyes, a double Planet/Gaze the wisest into madness/ With soft clear fire_ (and it would serve him right, wouldn't it, if she managed to accidentally enchant everyone in the Castle into fits as they listened to his love-letter?) to be followed by: _Wonder not that when thou speakest/Of the weak my heart is weakest_ (Sophie, recognizing a taunt to what Howl affectionately dubs "her weed-killing rages" when she sees one, harrumphs). 

But still-- _As one who feels an unseen spirit /Is my heart when thine is near it,_ it ends; despite herself, Sophie smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, okay, so Howl's experiences would have made him leery of poems--and canonically his tastes run more towards the Restoration rather than the Romantics--but I just couldn't resist :). Naturally "To Sophia (Miss Stacey)" by Percy Shelley is the one quoted in both the story itself and the title!


	22. commiseration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _mini-3sf? love! prompt: queen’s thief, attolia &/eddis, “our nearness to the King in love/ Is near the hate of those love not the king”_

Even months after the attack in the garden, Irene’s hands still shake almost imperceptibly when she tells Eddis: “I think it will be a very long time before I say that it is as easy to love Eugenides as to hate him.” In that she means that it is not difficult for anyone to feel a rush of passion when thinking of her King; the difficult part is sorting which emotion is which. 

Eddis, who perhaps comes closest to understanding, smiles ruefully in response.


	23. juvenilia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part one of an aborted Manaliabrid epic. nevertheless something I'm unreasonably fond of as part of my unending Undying head canon!

All Manaliabrid remembers of her childhood is life with Mother: calm, peaceful, as reliable as the Great River itself. If she tries, she can almost remember her father, a towheaded, plain-faced man whose best feature were his kind eyes, but it’s Mother who stands out, Mother with the steady rhythm of her loom, the glow of her shining pale hair, the clever fingers that stitched thick, lovely coats for the long winters. 

Manaliabrid supposes she does rather cling to her mother, but she can’t seem to help it. Mother has her rules, of course; Mother throws all her dolls into the fire once she’s tired of them, and never allows Manaliabrid to name any of them. The other girls don’t seem to understand this, any more than they understand the other jokes and games she shares with Mother. On the rare occasions she does think up an activity they can all enjoy together, Manaliabrid can never seem to keep the names of any of the other village girls straight in her head. Somehow she always manages to mix their names up with their mothers’, or worse, their grandmothers’, and by the look on their faces, always she can see she’s done something terribly wrong. 

She slinks back to Mother, then, frightened and wounded. Mother is almost always busy weaving, but she always has time for a kiss, or a hug, or a lesson at the looms. All Manaliabrid must do is ask. 

For a time, she deludes herself that life will go on this way forever. 

This changes the day she meets her Uncle Duck. At first she thinks he’s quite the handsomest man she’s ever met, and well she might: he has a smooth face, wide smile, and that fair hair that Manaliabrid, who took after her father when it came to looks, envies desperately. But he pats her head absently when Mother introduces her, before going on to take up all of Mother’s time with news of what happened in the world outside their little house—which was therefore, quite unimportant. 

That is how Manaliabrid learns to hate him.


End file.
